DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the site of Wardville, down in Johnson County. Now, a quarter mile south of where you're rolling past right now, there's a patch of ground that was almost the center of something — and that almost is the whole story. August of 1855.
Johnson County needs a county seat, and they pick a spot on eighty acres donated by a man named William O'Neal. They call the place Wardville, named for Thomas William Ward — born 1807, died 1872 — a Republic of Texas soldier and the second commissioner of the General Land Office of Texas. Big name, fine legacy.
Seemed like a solid foundation for a county seat. O'Neal gets to work on the courthouse. Now, when I say courthouse, picture something modest.
We're talking sixteen feet square, logs overlaid with clapboards, built by O'Neal himself, and the whole operation cost forty-nine dollars. Forty-nine dollars. You have probably spent more than that on gas today, and this was supposed to be the beating heart of Johnson County government.
But here's where the trouble comes in. Somebody — and I imagine this was not a comfortable meeting — somebody reads the Texas Constitution a little more carefully than they had before and notices a requirement: your county seat has to sit within five miles of the center of the county. Wardville didn't.
Not even close enough to argue about, apparently. So in 1856 — barely a year after they'd chosen it, barely long enough for that forty-nine-dollar courthouse to settle into the earth — Wardville was abandoned. Now, a story like that could just be a sad footnote.
A wrong turn, a wasted forty-nine dollars, a town that blinked and vanished. But here's the part that'll sit with you: later county line changes moved the boundaries around, and when the dust settled, that same stretch of ground — the one that violated the constitution, the one they walked away from — ended up near the center of the county after all. Wardville was right all along.
It just had to wait for the map to catch up.
What the marker says
(1/4 mile south of marker) First county seat of Johnson County, chosen in Aug. 1855, and located on an 80-acre donation from William O'Neal. Named for Thomas William Ward (1807-72), a Republic of Texas soldier and second commissioner of General Land Office of Texas. The first courthouse, 16 feet square, was built by O'Neal of logs overlaid with clapboards, at cost of $49. When Wardville was found to violate Texas constitution's requirement that a county seat by within 5 miles of center of county, it was abandoned (1856). Ironically, later county line changes made it near the center.